Federal investigators criticized the way the police department handled complaints of use of force. The Justice Department said a lack of documentation raised "concerns about the competency, thoroughness and impartiality of use-of-force investigations."

It said some police shootings "may have been avoidable." Cleveland later signed a settlement agreement with federal officials, who were to monitor for a year how the department investigated police shootings.

Arlene Anderson, the executive director of the Cleveland chapter of the NAACP, called for the Justice Department to investigate the shooting. Critics say the department's past has made that necessary.

In the last few years, The Plain Dealer has chronicled complaints of excessive force that injured residents and led to lawsuits that accuse officers of violating residents' civil rights.

"Cleveland has been a highly troubled police department for many years," said Scott Greenwood, a civil rights lawyer who has served as general counsel to the state and national American Civil Liberties Union and studies police accountability.

"What gets lost in all of this is that the officers are not the initiators," D'Angelo said. "They're the responders. They are responding to antisocial behavior. People don't realize what it is like to be a police officer.

"The real problem here is the criminal element," D'Angelo said. "The criminals have become more lawless. But we, as a society, focus on the officers who respond to the lawless element. We don't call out the people who initiate this conduct."

In the past, Cleveland police administrators have said they closely scrutinize cases in which officers use deadly and non-deadly force. In documents filed in civil cases against the department, lawyers have vigorously defended officers and denied allegations.

Last week, a city spokeswoman released information that showed McGrath has revised the department's use-of-force policies three times since he became chief in March 2005. A fourth revision is under law department review, the city said.

But a review of court records and Plain Dealer examinations in the past few years show a department that has been in the spotlight for the way it uses force and investigates it.

For instance:

The figures involving investigations of use of force have dramatically favored officers. All of the 4,427 investigations by supervisors from Jan. 1, 2003, through Sept. 9, 2006, ended in the officers' favor, The Plain Dealer reported in 2007.

Other figures suggest a troubling trend.

Between October 2005 and March 2011, Cleveland police chose Tasers to gain control of struggling suspects 969 times, according to a newspaper analysis. During that time, police supervisors found the use of the electrical shock device to be appropriate in all but five of the cases they reviewed. Criminal justice experts said the clearance rate strained credibility.

The use of excessive force has come with a cost, as the city has paid out millions of dollars to the families of victims in the past several years.

In June 2000, a federal jury awarded $3.1 million to Curtis Harris, a Cleveland man who was paralyzed when a patrolman shot him in the back during a struggle in 1997.

Earlier this year, the city agreed to pay a former state prison guard $900,000 involving a confrontation with vice officers in which the officers were close to shooting each other outside the Northeast Ohio Pre-Release Center in 2009. The confrontation ended with the prison guard on the ground and four officers struggling with him.

"Clearly, there is a disconnect between what the department says about a case and what juries say," said Terry Gilbert, an attorney who represented Harris and Martin Robinson, the former prison guard.

In a span of weeks in the summer of 2011, attorneys filed lawsuits that accused officers of beating suspects.

In a case filed in July, the family of a teenager with Down syndrome accused an officer of roughing up the youth. Ramon Ortiz and Alma Perez say Patrolman Brian Kazimer used excessive force on their son, Juan, in the summer of 2010, according to a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court.

The youth was 16 and stood 4-feet-11 inches tall and weighed 118 pounds at the time. Police said the youth fled when Kazimer and another officer approached him and mistook him for a neighborhood robber.

Subodh Chandra, an attorney representing the youth's family, said family members repeatedly told officers that the youth had Down syndrome. The city denies the allegations that the officers violated the youth's civil rights, and the case is pending.

In the second suit, filed in August 2011, a Cleveland Heights man accused four Cleveland police officers -- Paul Crawford, Martin Lentz, Christopher Randolph and Kevin Smith -- of assaulting him after a New Year's Day arrest.

The suit contends that Edward Henderson surrendered peacefully but was kicked and struck while in handcuffs, after leading officers on what police have described as a dangerous high-speed car chase in Cleveland. The officers have denied wrongdoing. Henderson, 42, crashed his minivan near East 38th Street and South Marginal Road.

Records show federal prosecutors have investigated the case to determine whether there was a criminal violation of Henderson's civil rights. Subpoenas were issued earlier this year, but it is unclear where the investigation stands.

Henderson pleaded guilty to felonious assault on a police officer for his driving in the chase and was sentenced to three years in prison, according to court and state prison records.

On Dec. 31, 2010, a day before Henderson's arrest, Rodney Brown, 40, of Cleveland died after officers subdued him with a Taser.

Also in the summer of 2011, Brown's family filed a wrongful death suit in U.S. District Court. They claimed officers pulled Brown over for a traffic violation on East 113th in Cleveland. He followed commands, but an officer used force on him after Brown asked what he had down wrong, according to the lawsuit.

Brown then ran. Officers caught him, wrestled with him and one of them used a Taser on him multiple times. About an hour after the stop, Brown died of cardiac arrest.

In documents, lawyers for the officers denied wrongdoing. The documents said Brown led the officers "into a prolonged and vigorous struggle where Brown refused to be detained or subdued and pulled out a knife."

The case is pending.

D'Angelo, the union lawyer, stressed that officers daily are forced to respond to an ever-growing criminal element. He does not blame officers.

"The department has not run amok," he said. "What's missed in this is the criminal conduct that the officers have to deal with. The running from police; the ramming of police cruisers; the officers fearing for their lives. These officers have to deal with crazy, lunatic behavior."

And he said it won't get any better.

"When I retire and leave this job, the person who replaces me will have it much tougher," he said. "The criminal element will only get worse."

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